Availability API Updates
There have been several updates to our API this month, mostly focused around our scheduling capabilities.
Availability Response Formats
We've extended our Availability end-point to support two new formats: slots and overlapping_slots in addition to the existing periods format. Our approach with API design is to aim for maximum flexibility in the first instance, then work with customers to understand what additional functionality they'd like to offload to Cronofy. With these two new formats, you can request that Cronofy generates the bookable slots that your application can offer users. You can see slots in action in our Slot Picker UI Element and overlapping_slots in Availability Viewer. See the Availability documentation for more details.
Real-Time Scheduling
A couple of small but important updates here. The first is to support a minimum notice period required before a slot can be booked. If your users need 24 hours to prepare for a booking, this gives them that. See the Real-Time Scheduling documentation for more details. We also now support creating private events as part of the scheduling flow. Smart Invites also support private events now.
Availability Rule Selection
The Availability Rules provided as part of Managed Availability allow you to control the working hours used by any Cronofy Availability query. To support situations where your users need different working hours, we now allow one or more availability rules to be selected as part of the Availability query. Typically, this is used when people work from different locations or they operate a different schedule for different types of work. See the Availability document from more details.
Availability Query Limits
Currently the Availability queries are limited to up to 10 participants over a 35-day period. We're working hard on increasing those limits to support additional use cases. For example:
- How do I find a meeting room that's available in the next two hours from the 50 possible?
- I have 25 coaches suitable to support a user, how do I find who's available in the next few days?
We'll soon be enabling this for some of our existing customers. If you would benefit from this functionality and want to be part of the early test group, get in touch at hello@cronofy.com.